


Unfinished Problems

by hamine2



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Kara Danvers Needs a Hug, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 03:04:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20771486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamine2/pseuds/hamine2
Summary: Kara Danvers is actually really good at math, even if she pretends she isn't. So when Lena is stressed out trying to find the answer to a really hard equation,  the super decides to step in and give her girlfriend a little help.





	Unfinished Problems

Saturday mornings in the Danvers-Luthor residence were meant only for cuddling and sleeping till lunch.

This tradition had been started by accident, in the early days of Lena and Kara's relationship, after a really long week of hard work.

Between writing articles, planning meetings, and saving the world in a continuous cycle, both women barely had time to be with each other. They were so touch starved, that when friday night arrived, they climbed on to each other like koalas, and didn't leave the bed until the afternoon of the next day.

One might think that the couple had spent all of that time having sex - Alex sure did, after Kara told her about it-, but they were so utterly tired, so painfully exhausted, that all they did was hold each other close and sleep profoundly.

The excessively long cuddling session was meant to be a one time thing, but the next weekend, the scene replayed itself. And after a while, they stopped questioning it's presence in their schedule. Friday nights and saturdays mornings simply became sacred; their mattress turned into an altar.

So, it is needless to say that when Kara rolled around in their bed, searching for her perfectly snuggleable girlfriend, only to find an empty space where her body usually was, for a minute, she got worried.

Raising her head from her pillow, she used her ears to pick up her heartbeat as fast as she could, and felt a giant wave of relief crash against her, when she noticed it was near, inside the house, and not at all agitated.

Still, just to be sure the woman hadn't been kidnapped - it happened more times than she would like to admit-, she rose from her bed and walked quickly to the doorway. From there, she could see the living room and the kitchen, as well as the bathroom door. Walking around, she certified that Lena wasn't in any of these spaces. Naturally, there was only one more place she could be right now, besides LCorp. Her not-so- secret laboratory downstairs.

Yawning, the blonde made her way to the underground, which she had jokingly named "Lena's Evil Genius Lair".

The lab consisted of a large, ominous-looking room, filled with so many machines, stacks of paper, chemistry sets, and hazardous materials, that one could easily get lost between all the paraphernalia.

That's not to say things were out of order though. Every item on every surface of every table and countertop was perfectly organized, either by colour or size. They all had their specific placement, and if one little thing dared to move an inch from where it was supposed to be, Lena would notice.

Also - and this was a thing that shocked Kara when she first had seen the place-, dust was non-existent.

She still wasn't sure how, but her girlfriend managed to keep the lab cleaner than any hospital she'd ever visited, either in or out of Earth.

The white walls and floor were spotless. She would never admit it, of course, but the place was so pristine, it kinda amazed and creeped her out at the same time.

"What are you doing here so early?"

The hero strolled through the main hall until she reached the back of the lab, where a giant white board was viciously attacked by one of Lena's markers.

"I woke up a few hours ago and couldn't go back to sleep, so I came here to see if I could spend my time doing something useful, and finally figure this equation out... Turns out I can't." She sighed, lowering her marker, pinching the bridge of her nose with her other hand.

"Well..." The hero leaned against an empty metal table, whilst examining the endless rows of numbers. "What's supposed to do? The equation, I mean."

"It's for a project I am developing for the DEO... It's complicated."

"Huh." She smiled, amused at the secrecy. Normally, her girlfriend would go on and on about what she was working on, excited even by the prospect of difficulty and challenge. Not today, apparently. "Did they make you sign an NDA?"

"Actually, they did." Lena replied, and both of them laughed. "You know... when I agreed to work on this, I thought it would be easy, but... It's not. And it's getting on my nerves."

"I can see that." Kara walked up to her, hugging her from behind. "Maybe you should give it a rest? Let it sink for a minute... Sometimes when I'm stuck on an article, taking a long hot bath helps. It gives me time to clean up my mind, you know... And then my head's not so heavy, with a thousand different thoughts running around like caffeinated squirrels, taking up unnecessary space..."

"Now that's a creative way to describe stress." Lena laughed again, this time turning around, crossing both arms behind the hero's neck. "But... Maybe you're right. Maybe I do need a break. It's been a long week."

"A Luthor agreeing with a Super and admitting to be tired? Now that's a good headline!" The blonde joked, before shutting down the businesswoman's irritated expression with a surprise kiss on the tip of her nose. "I'm just kidding grumpy head!... So! Do you want me to warm up a bath for you? Make you breakfast? Be sickening cute and a great girlfriend?"

"You're always like that, so wouldn't even matter if I said yes?" Lena was the one to kiss her this time around, ditching her face and going straight for her mouth.

At the contact, Kara frowned and jumped back.

"Lee, wait! I didn't brush my teeth yet!" Her little protest came along with a hint of self- consciousness.

"Like I care." She replied happily, kissing harder.

Kara tried to get away once again, but it was useless. She couldn't stand a chance against her soft, warm lips. There was no way she could resist such wonderful assault.

Soon enough, they were making out all over the table, whiteboard and equations almost completely forgotten.

Feeling the Kryptonian's hand explore the soft skin beneath her shirt, Lena decided that Kara was right.

This would definitely help her brain relax.

\---

Whilst Lena was peacefully resting on a bathtub full of bubbles, humming softly and content with her eyes closed, Kara was quickly scrabbling her thoughts away in the whiteboard of her lab.

For her, the wall of numbers ahead wasn't frightening at all, given that she had already seen them before, rewritten over a thousand times by her own father, when she was younger.

After years of learning how to solve that particular problem, just by watching and listening to him, it was rather easy for the blonde, to fill in the blanks left by her girlfriend's angry eraser with a row of memorized numbers and mathematical signs.

She knew how the equation worked pretty well. She had learned the mechanics, because somebody else had explained them to her in Krypton.

But still, even if she found it simple, she knew that to any common human, getting as far as the businesswoman had gotten on her own was impressive.

That particular equation had taken thousands and thousands of years to be fully solved in Krypton, and yet, in this planet, all it took was one frustrated Luthor to almost complete it in the expand of what? A few days? Weeks?

She knew that her girlfriend was a genius, but watching her line of thought and seeing how her brain worked in first hand, it was definitely exciting.

Stepping back after writing the final numbers on the whiteboard, she lowered the marker and smiled. Her calligraphy intertwining Lena's was a beautiful sight, without a doubt, but the end result of it... It was even more breathtaking.

"Kara? Where are you, love?" She heard her girlfriend's voice call her from upstairs, and she ran away from the lab as quickly as she could.

She pretended to be in the kitchen, making breakfast. Later in the day, when the Luthor woman took another look at the board, she had a suspicion that it hadn't been the case.

All of the sudden, the equation before her had a well developed answer. An answer she hadn't written herself.

In true Kara fashion, once she was questioned about it, the hero denied all claims of having messed around with the numbers.

"I suck at math, remember?" She laughed it off, and tried to play it cool. "You must have written the results earlier and forgotten about it."

Lena raised an eyebrow in return, crossing her arms.

"Are you sure about that, Kara Zor-El?"

The blonde gulped in fear. The billionaire found it cute.

"Yeah. Totally. Didn't write anything down. I swear."

"Okay." She pretended to agree, but in her mind, she was already coming up with a master plan to debunk Kara's lies. "You can go now."

\---

Three days later, her trap was set.  
She had pretended to be stressed out for a while, complaining about not managing to get anywhere concrete, or find any coherent results for the new problem she was tackling.

She was "trying" to solve one of math's biggest mysteries. The Navier-Stokes equations.

These equations are used to describe the motion of viscous fluid, like air passing over an aircraft wing or water flowing out of a tap. Sometimes, they work. And sometimes, it is unclear whether they fail, or give no answer at all. 

Over the years, many mathematicians had tried to resolve the challenge, but absolutely all of them had failed. Even Lena.

So, already resigned to the fact that she would never find an ending to this labyrinth of confusion, she left the board alone, and told Kara she was going to take a bath. Of course, she was lying.

She turned on the tap, and pretended to get in the bathtub. She wanted to trick the superhero, and she knew she'd had to be extra dramatic for her plan to work. Super hearing and sight be damned.

After five minutes of waiting, she slowly opened the bathroom door, fully clothed, and looked around for any signs of movement. She quickly realized the first floor was empty, which meant Kara could only be downstairs.

"It worked!" She thought to herself, carefully making her way to her 'evil lair'.

Like a ninja, or a well trained Russian secret spy, she crouched behind her equipment, and started to make her way to the whiteboard.

It was rather funny, she had to admit. A grown up woman, with the mind of a genius, and a name so powerful as her family's, crawling like a spider across the floor, only to bust a Kryptonian liar. Her squinted eyes didn't help to paint well the scene either.  
  
Still, even if her method was simply childish and overall stupid, it had seemed to work. From her position, hiding behind a tall water tank, she could see that the blonde hadn't even heard her come in, and remained focused on solving the problem ahead of her.

The mind-blowing thing thought, it was that Kara was actually doing it. She walked away from her hiding place and crossed both arms, letting her jaw fall down in shock.

She didn't know what or how to feel. Jealous? Intimidated? Impressed? Horny? All of these things at once?

One thing was certain, though. She was amazed.

Once she saw the blonde take a few steps back, lowering the marker and smiling at her work, she couldn't help but clap.

Kara jumped like a frightened cat.

"Holy shit you actually solved it!" She laughed, making her way to the whiteboard.

"Lena! I'm... What are you... It wasn't... You said you were taking a bath!" The hero rambled nervously.

"I lied, but apparently I wasn't the only one." She pointed to the board.

"I'm sorry! I really didn't want to lie to you! Well, I did, but it isn't because I don't trust you, not all, I love you and I'm so sorry-"

"-Kara, love. It's okay. I'm not mad." She laughed, massaging her own temples. "It's quite the contrary, actually. I don't think I've ever loved you more than right now."

"Wait, what?" Now, that wasn't something she was expecting. "Why?"

"You solved one of the millennium problems in half an hour!" Lena exclaimed, still perplexed. "Oh God, you just became a millionaire."

"Excuse me?!"

"The prize for solving the Navier-Stokes equations... It's a million dollars!"

"Lee, you can't... I c-can't turn this in! I can't claim that prize!"

"Why not?"

"Because..." She breathed in, already panicking. "I'm an alien... I can't stand out. If I do, the press will dig, and if that happens, my life can be destroyed, my privacy can be ruined, and I can lose everything..."

Reality slapped the Luthor quicker than she would have believed possible.

"Oh..."

"As much as I love you enthusiasm and your joy, and I understand why you're so stoked and happy, I also love you, and I can't lose what we have, I can't lose our life together, and I... If people find out I'm Supergirl, it won't be safe for you to be near me anymore... I can't... I can't risk that... I..."

"Kara, Kara... Sweetheart, calm down." She grabbed her face with her hands, and stared deeply into her eyes. "No one knows anything yet. It's just you and me here. You're okay. Everything is okay. Breath with me. Come on."

That anxiety attack surely hadn't come from nowhere. Lena knew right away something was wrong. But before pressing for answers, she calmed the hero down, making her sit in a stool until she regained her ground. Once she did, both of them hugged, and the businesswoman used the opportunity to thread her fingers through her silky locks of hair.

"How you're feeling?"

"Better. Thanks." The Kryptonian's answer was short and raspy.

"Can we talk?" She asked, perceiving her sudden tiredness. She wasn't blaming her for it. Worrying about things truly was a draining activity.

"Yeah... We can." Kara agreed. "But Lee... Please understand. I can't turn these answers in, not with me being who I am."

"I get it, sweetheart. But there are another ways we can do it, without your identity being threatened. I, for example, always publish my research with an pseudonym... That helps people look straight at the work I've done, not at my family's name. You can do that too. If you want to."

  
She seemed to consider it for a moment, only for frustration to crush her hopes and dreams mercilessly.

"I'm sorry... I don't know. This is hard!" She exhaled, burying herself even deeper in Lena's embrace. "Even if I were to use a fake name... It doesn't feel right. It just doesn't."

"Okay... I'm not forcing you to do it honey, but... Can I at least know why it feels wrong?"

"It wasn't me who found the answers to these equations. It was my people. Kryptonians." She explained, holding onto her girlfriend for dear life. "I didn't do anything but remember, and write down the answers that they came up with. It feels like I'm stealing their credit, somehow."

Well, her answer made a lot of sense, Lena wasn't going to deny it.

"If that's your biggest worry... I completely understand why you wouldn't want the prize. But I still think you can, and should, share your knowledge with the world. Because that knowledge doesn't exist here yet. And perhaps you're right, you weren't the first person to find out the solution. But if you spread it... You would help so many people. And if you don't want the money because you feel you don't deserve it, you can always give it away..."

Kara listened quietly, before nodding softly and replying:

"I... I'll think about it, okay? Just... Not right now. Please?"

"Of course." She kissed the top of her head gently, which was greatly appreciated by the blonde. "I still have some questions though, if you don't mind answering them."

"Are you going to ask why I lied to you?"

"How did you guess?" Lena said sarcastically, getting a dry laugh out of the superhero. "If you don't want to talk about that too it's okay, it can wait."

"No, no... I promised I never would lie to you again. I broke that promise, and I shouldn't have."

"Kara, you just lied to me about knowing math. It's not that big of a deal, honestly."

"No, it is." The woman protested, parting the hug to look at her girlfriend in the eyes. "A promise is a promise. I shouldn't have broken it. I'm sorry."

"It's alright darling. Don't beat yourself over it. I'm not mad." She insisted, still playing with her hair. "I'm honestly just curious. Why did you do it?"

Kara sighed.

"It's not for one particular reason. I have a few."

"I'm listening."

The blonde breathed in, and collected her thoughts before speaking.

"First, there's the whole thing about the credit, and me feeling like I don't deserve it. Then there's the fact that I was just used to lie about it. Ever since I came to earth, everyone I know has told me to hide my abilities, no matter how small or big they are... I guess it just became routine. Even after you found out I was Supergirl, there were still things I didn't tell you about, because they were so well hidden, even I forgot about them. Like, for example, my super intelligence when it comes to math. Or the fact that I can taste more flavours in food that humans usually do. Or that not only I can fly, I'm also great at skateboarding. That one isn't actually a superpower, but I figured you should know." Lena smiled, still listening to her speech. "Also... there's the fact that even though I do know a lot of math... I just don't enjoy doing it."

At the end of the sentence, something changed in her tone, and the Luthor picked it up right away.

"What? Why?" She asked, noticing Kara's crestfallen expression seemed to have gotten even worse.

"It just... It brings back a lot of memories of home. And in my case, even good memories can turn into bad ones, if I remember where it all ended." She sniffled, then quickly wiped the tears off her face.

She wasn't expecting that answer at all. In fact, she hadn't thought that Krypton's destruction would even be a factor in her behavior.

"I'm sorry. I honestly hadn't thought about that. If I knew, I wouldn't have asked. I know it hurts you to talk about it."

"No, don't apologise. It's not your fault at all." She interjected her rambling. "Besides, there is, or was, nothing to be done. Krypton was meant to die, one way or another. Talking about it shouldn't bother me the way it does. It already happened. It's in the past." She said, closing her eyes for a moment, before searching for Lena's. They held in so much pain and melancholy, it was hard for the engineer to even begin to understand.

"Just because it's in the past, it doesn't mean it can't hurt, Kara." She replied gently. "And while talking about our own trauma about it's good, because it can help us heal, it doesn't mean we're forced to do it. You have to take your time. We all do. So, if you don't want to talk about it right now..."

"I do." The blonde intervened. "You're right about what you said, but I do want to talk about it. And I trust you... So..." She paused. Looked around the room for a bit, anxiously rubbing the fabric of her pants, before continuing. "My father was a scientist. A brilliant one, too. He was actually the head of the science guild, and a member of Krypton's council." She explained. "His fate was different than my mother's. He died in the explosion."

So that was the root of her pain -at least concerning math-. Lena wasn't sure, but she could guess how the rest of the story went. Her father was a scientist, which meant he taught her most of what she knows, which mean that her knowledge would forever be tainted by his sudden death. It wasn't a promising tale.

"Tell me about him. How was he like?" The question came out for her mouth before she could stop herself.

She was trying to distract Kara's mind from the horrors of her past, by asking her something nice about it for a change.

Watching a warm smile spread over her saddened face, she was glad to see that her tactics had worked.

"He was a tall, very strong, dark haired man. He was soft, and gentle. At least with me and Mom, he always was... He wasn't shy, but spoke in a really low voice. I mean really low." She laughed, then bit her lip. "He wasn't very comfortable sharing physical affection, but he tried to show he cared in his own way; teaching. He would explain something to me, get overexcited, and then lose himself in very nerdy rambles, just like I do sometimes."

"I could picture that perfectly." Lena replied, even though she knew Kara wasn't done talking.

"Do you know how I knew I'd never see him again?" She continued, watery eyes barely holding in the tears. "He hugged me. Just before I went in the pod, he gave me the tightest hug ever, and said he loved me."

The weight of that statement crushed the flow of the conversation immediately. There was a short pause, filled with almighty silence. It was so quiet, they could hear the sirens of the cars moving down the street.

"I'm so sorry."

Having lost a parent herself, the businesswoman knew how badly it hurt. It wasn't a light ordeal. It was a never-ending pain that followed her around since she was four.

"I'm really sorry, Kar."

"It's okay. It felt nice to remember how he was before disaster struck." She said, attempting to smile through her suffering. "Thanks for allowing me to do that."

After these words were spoken, Lena leaned forward, and sheltered Kara with her arms. Both of them held each other close for a while, comfortable in the protective warmth of the embrace.

Then, the Luthor woman decided to make one last serious question.

"Do you think he would have liked me?"

The hero laughed.

"You're as much as a nerd as he was, of course he would have liked you."

"Hey!"

"I'm just saying!"

"You're a dumbass."

"But you still love me."

Always, Lena thought, tightening her grip on the Kryptonian. Always.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted fluff, but ended up with this instead. Also, did I ever mention I was horrible at math in highschool? I somehow managed to graduate with honors in Spanish, whilst failing math. Fun times.


End file.
